Garden Update

Blessed Lugnasadh to you all.

I do hope that you have been able to reap some of what you have sown, today, and that your veggie patches are plentiful and your borders bear gifts.

So, today is the beginning of the harvest season.  The grain in the field is ripening nicely.   Whilst walking the hooligan along the path around the circumference of the field we retrieve any stray ears of wheat which have been casually plucked and discarded, or stems which have been knocked down by passing Joe Public.  On our way back to the house, we offer these to the chickens who adore their wheaty gifts and, tuk-tukking softly to themselves, shake the wheat ears and feast upon the resulting grain.

We are on leave from work this week and have managed to get to a couple of boot sales, thankfully between showers.  s a result, the garden has been blessed with some new perennial plants for a very reasonable amount of cash.    At the very top of the garden we have a very neglected border which has been given somewhat of a makeover.  This border gets very dry and, once the new plants were in situ, I added a bark mulch in the hope of retaining a little more moisture. The bark mulch came free from a local tree surgeon who gifts the shredded fruits of his labour to the allotment people.  I managed to appropriate some this time so have avoided paying garden centre prices!    I'm really pleased with how it looks now.

These are a few of the plants we bought from boot sales over the weekend.

Heuchera Chocolate Ruffles.  The ''old fashioned" name for the Heuchera is 'Coral'

A delicate Astilbe - Sprite.

I've been after this particular species of Buddleia for ages - the photograph
makes it very pale - it is actually very dark purple and is called 'Black
 Knight'  Another much maligned invasive plant this one, but I can live with that!

This plant is beautiful.  It almost looks like a cornflower, yet is scabious blue in colour and
its cornflower type flower heads are held aloft tall slender stems.  Unfortunately car boot man removed the bliddy label before he handed us the plants I didn't realise until we had got home. 

The calendulas grow in their droves down on the lottie and, whilst they do get invasive if not checked, I love their cheery little bright faces and so am more than happy for them to self seed in this area of the garden.  I lifted a big clump of them on Sunday and divided them into smaller clumps for planting.  Some of them are already setting seed and so even if their flowering is very short lived this season, I'm sure that I shall have a border full of brightness this time next year.  

With the addition of some 'cheap in the sale' Willow edges from our local Wilkinsons  - the final Ta-dahh!



Until tomorrow

xxx